001okay um so welcome to the september 21st 2020 meeting of the north texas here we go sorry but we're doing it for you at home okay trying to keep the remote access going so um welcome to the september 21st 2020 meeting of the north brookfield school committee this meeting is being recorded by north brookfield elpac uh if there is anyone present who is also recording this meeting please raise your hand so others are aware this meeting is also being broadcast via zoom and we do have um our zoom requirements um i'm just i sent a message to everybody saying can they hear us and i think we're a little muffled so i don't know if it's the mics that they need to hear or it's just the masks it might be a little bit of
002both but um we're working through the lpac sound so i'm hoping um i'm hoping that it it gets better i'm getting a lot of very staticky is this better any better that's better okay all right so when we're speaking speak into our microphones all right cool um so the biggest thing is um all right it is as follows let's see find my thing all right so we're now going to begin a remote meeting through the use of video communication it's important that we continue to respect the privacy and confidentiality of members of our school community including our teachers and staff and our students and their families by participating in this remote meeting today you agree that you will not save record share or post this session or any photos from this session i will not
003be recording this session for uh any reason and it will be as mrs tucker said be recorded and reposted by elpac if you do not agree to these rules or don't want to participate in a recorded meeting that will be posted and shared uh please disconnect from this session now all right um so i just let people know i brought a lapbook laptop from home so we can keep an eye on the chat here and uh i'm signed in under my husband's name so if you see kevin tucker there that he is actually not here i just wanted to start i did ask um anybody if they had any any words of appreciation for any of our staff so i have a few things i want to start with a little bit of recognition um
004thanks to the fifth grade teachers for constantly answering my frantic emails last week when things were just not working right technology wise while you were trying to teach in your classroom students as well i seriously don't know how you do it thanks to mr manucci for always answering my phone calls returning my messages emails all summer long and into the first few weeks of school i know it has been so busy for him but you would never know beckett comes home and can't wait to tell me he got a lot of air high fives for mrs tarantino for being such a good reader thanks to mrs priestley and all the staff for just making the first week so welcoming for kids and for myself as a parent i was so nervous to send my kids
005back but i knew they needed to be there and my nerves were instantly settled on that first day seeing everyone so happy my kids come home every day so excited to tell me about being at school it's still a warm fun clean place to learn i'd like to give a big shout out to mrs servant and mrs martin for being so organized and attentive with digital learning so far academic assignments are for the most part accessible and not overwhelming these teachers respond to emails in a timely fashion focus on academic and social emotional education during this unprecedented time they've also offered to put better hard copy pick pickup bags for the students which is going above and beyond our expectations we've had some technology hiccups but they've been great at troubleshooting and trying to eradicate
006the issues quickly i'd also like to thank the school secretary dresden renault for being so helpful with this transition the food services and cafeteria staff have also been exceptional with adjusting to the new lunch routine and pick-up meals the school psychologists tyler petrus and mr manucci have also been responsive to emails and scheduling meetings assessments it takes a team and this team that my girls have at nbes has blown me away thus far um this is pratt my kids love seeing her at drop off i'd like to shout out mrs martin for remote teaching four grades of students she has been patient and strength based and positive as always please shout out allison bulger her job is often overlooked and sometimes thankless lol but in our current environment her task is even harder i always
007appreciate her diligence and her humor especially in a combat opening also thanks to dresden sheila and mary beth i'm not done yet thank you for being patient um to all the teachers out there we know you do so much more than just teach thank you i was concerned as most parents how my children would react to the changes in the new look of things at school on the bus etc but when they got home that first day i was pleasantly relieved that they were just so happy to be back they didn't really seem to notice or didn't mind the changes i know how hard it is and an adjustment for everyone involved in this new world we are navigating however the job of school systems must be one of the most challenging i appreciate everyone's
008efforts teachers support staff nursing culinary janitorial grounds crew buses transportation and anyone else i may have left out as a mom and a teacher i could not be more happy with how the elementary school has turned out for my daughter the building is bright warm and welcoming i took a peek into her classroom and found a beautiful room that was inviting and just like a third grade classroom should be my heart is happy that my child can attend school in person thank you to everyone who has a part in this north brookfield elementary school is a magical place where learning smiles and laughter still exists shout out to mr stanley at the high school for his postcards and ongoing communication with his students during covet in the summer plus the birthday greeting he sent for
009my daughter we truly appreciate you and your effort and then just for myself um we had a technical technological glitch last wednesday and my daughter got kicked off a zoom before she got to share and mr cervelo called us up and jumped back on zoom with her so she could let him know how she was doing so i appreciate that very much all right can i add one thing i really enjoyed the the videos made for the introduction to the school and the covid procedures because you know obviously kids can come in ahead of time and learn what was going on so i enjoyed the cut out buses and the production value was was commendable so it was it was a really nice thing to see and it was fun it was a fun watch
010and i think it showed them what to expect when they got here so thank you guys for doing that um so now we just we have two minutes that we need to approve the regular meeting of august 17th 2020 and the special meeting of september 8th 2020. does anyone have any comments on the meeting minutes corrections or anything all right i need a motion to approve i move to approve the meeting minutes from uh regular meeting of august 17th and a second who said that okay elizabeth sorry i i saw her saying i'm all in favor hi i um in the uh special meeting of september 8th need a motion for that one too the move to accept the minutes of the special meeting of september 8th that was first all in favor all right
011so we have megan bogus yep i see her there so megan uh bogus is the student student representative so um hi megan why don't you tell us what's been going on okay yes we can okay so we had a few things going on [Music] um we're having a fundraiser for chromebook coverage and they'll be sold for 15 dollars and we come up with qr codes around the high schools and even standard was responsible to purchase one and then see new students or like the blue silver well we want to plan at first student council we also have qr codes for that around the school so you could just turn on their phone and send in a google doc with like 20 signatures and then they'll be picked up again and then we're supposed fair coming
012up we are planning on having this virtually we'll send out a google form for each student to fill out and they can select what that could be assigned for and then they will be added to a google classroom and post it and check those so we're going to be meeting with the student council um e-board i believe beginning thursday on a regular basis so some of those topics that megan covered are part of that meeting like typically they've had an activities fair where students where student groups are out in the hallways and kids come up and uh find out a little bit more about that club or activity obviously we can't do it in the traditional way so we're gonna explore some alternative ways to be able to have an activities fair so kids can
013see what types of options are available so if i understood correctly every activity i'll have a google classroom and you can sign up to go check it out yeah we gotta just finalize the details to make it work for everyone all right thanks megan thank you megan so we actually did have correspondence to the school committee uh from the commissioner commissioner reilly yeah um which we're gonna address that actually two letters one from what about actually no it's just one letter one letter with two pieces two pieces um and we're gonna move things around just a little bit so um in mr lin's report later on he's going to discuss what we what's called the phases of learning so that's when we make decisions about switching from one mode of learning to another so we're
014going to bring that and discuss that real quickly right now and then we'll have some time for public participation and the letter from the commissioner actually is part of that so mr lin if you want to just go over the uh phases of learning yeah so the commissioner's letter there's two parts the first part is the department of public health website their color-coded health metric for every town in the state and the whole idea was to provide districts with information about the general level of coveted health for lack of a better term within their community so that they could make decisions and part of those decisions are obviously around school so we've been working in the superintendent's association to sort of try to parse that out and one of the challenges i think as i
015explained in the last meeting is that every community is so individual you know a community like north brookfield is a small rural community having a one-size-fits-all approach to closing versus opening versus a community like worcester probably doesn't make sense so so what we've worked on is a general sort of guideline to follow where based on the total number of confirmed cases in the state of massachusetts positivity rate would be two metrics that we would use as kind of a guiding light and then use local context with the school committee the board of health and other local officials to make decisions about whether we should be in remote learning hybrid learning or move to all-in-person learning i think we all understand at this point all in person learning is we're not ready for that probably in
016the short term i don't know what short how to define short term or long term anymore based on uh what you hear in the news but um but i think really for us it's whether we should be in hybrid or remote at this point and that's what we tried to pull together as a superintendent's association was you know the whole idea of looking at the number of confirmed cases within a community and the state positivity rate and then work together with you know board of health or the local officials school committee to say what's right for our community given the current conditions and all the local context that goes into that so forwarded this to the board of health um and actually had a conversation today with mr brusso and he um he indicated they're
017looking at that uh and would get back to me with some feedback uh i also went back to our superintendent's association and asked for more uh if there could be more and i think that's where we're running i'm sorry um i i don't mean to cut in i'm just this is nearly impossible to hear and i think you're going over probably a lot of the really important information that people came to hear so you know we're [Music] but not go through the alpac sound system well the problem with that is then it there won't be any sound on the lpac so rich can you take your i mean we are six feet away so if he takes his mask off see if this is any better elizabeth is this better i don't know it's hard
018to tell it seemed like it seemed better initially and then just it's yeah i don't know i think we have to have to talk a little more so you can't just do the meetings that the people who are remote can hear you through the zoom and then alpac can film it separately so that or is that united well i think that's the problem we ran into last time which was elpac you know was recording us but we didn't have a way to record the sound so you you know yeah okay so last time the sound was bad because we had the mic in the room and trying to have it on the web so you guys at home you were telling me the sound was bad is it any can you hear me better now
019not really not really okay um you know what let's take a break here in the meeting okay so we're gonna uh can i get a motion to temporarily adjourn here i'll make a motion to temporarily adjourn we'll be back we'll try to be back in like 10 minutes so we can see if we can make this better although does he can he see us be able to hear us talking on youtube they'll post their comments well what you're going to do is can you guys hear me now no not yet hello what am i gonna do so type hello public participation like a i'm wrap listening [Music] star trek [Music] the don't know window that didn't work i don't know that's what the problem is there people who are on zoom in youtube okay so
020the sound up is so we can't have horrible can we have people on youtube watching and then chatting on zoom but they have to be muted on zoom i i think so but i think there's a delay okay there's a delay to youtube yeah yeah i think stupid i don't know what to do can we just have a go full on well then they can't should we just like try this again next monday [Music] yeah your computer yep but it's it's the delay so maria said oh i have it on my phone like whatever 30 seconds ago and then it just came out so okay can we just do a zoom meeting and they can record us on zoom right can we just do that for this evening yeah these people are all on zoom
021yep the only difference was the live piece um yeah i mean the problem is of course then when we you know we unmute ourselves is that going to be a feedback for you it's going to be a nightmare so i guess can we use the microphone of the speaker and plug this plug it into the computer like what did we do last time where we had the microphone we had the microphone plugged in but people complained they couldn't hear very well but that was working and that stopped me i mean they can't hear at all now it's right in the chat if you go up it says you know they said they couldn't hear right um so i mean honestly the easiest thing to do so we can actually have a meeting tonight is to
022just do a zoom meeting yeah and we would just have to go to separate rooms okay because when we're in the same room we get all the feedback you can use this i'll use my phone okay then um hopefully i don't run out of don't have an iphone charger do you want to use this and i can go get my computer otherwise we're gonna do you want to go to my office i got to take this to another room too right feedback with rich's computer yeah so i think we have to set maria and tim up in separate rooms there okay yeah i just need a i need to try this on my phone because um where do you want to go i don't have to go far like one room over or something here
023i'll sit in the hallway if i need to this the next one right there is yeah whatever it's pretty nice it's on this decline our destiny concert do you want to go there comfy oh uh it's on the uh agenda i'll forward it to you thank you [Music] so [Music] um in going over what you were talking about the commissioner's letter and the phase would it help if people still muted themselves that are nearby well i just it's because i'm right next to the um school committee room that's all other than that it's fine all right i'm back can you hear me yes so it took me a minute all right so we're all zoom now and lpac is recording through zoom so we're still working on the technology end i guess it's the best
024way to describe this all right um do you want me to try to pick up where we left off in some way shape or form okay i will um rich um yeah if you want to uh uh succinctly go over the phases of learning please okay so the phases of learning in the last school committee meeting a special meeting on september 8th it was i think as i said then a compilation of work done at the superintendent's association to try to help districts with identifying when it's time to ship from either remote to a hybrid hybrid just in person or to remote whatever uh it might be the challenge that we've had putting together something is is uh that's acceptable to all is the one-size-fits-all approach the idea that every community is the same just
025doesn't exist worcester is different from north brookfield that's different from um you know a vocational school that serves whatever 10 12 15 communities so there's no good one model that says this is when you should switch from one to the other so uh what we did was we put together two pieces of information one is uh confirmed cases per hundred in the state of massachusetts positivity rate as a guide to assist in making transition decisions uh the cases per 100 000 is that color-coded map that you see on the dph website of red yellow green or gray i guess is the best way to describe the color that sort of outlines and defines how many cases per hundred thousand your town has and then the state of positive state of massachusetts positivity rate has been
026essentially sort of sent out on a daily basis as well the number of people who tested how many are positive and they're shooting for less than two percent is what their real their biggest goal is uh and obviously their biggest goal was to have it zero but they they like to see it below two percent so um so at the last meeting uh the committee asked me to forward this to the board of health and back the superintendents association for some more help i've done both um i spoke to trevor brucho from the board of health today he said he's not ignoring us they are looking at it we've got to give us some feedback on it and uh the superintendent's association is sort of stuck because you have this um so many school districts
027are different because as i said earlier that no school district is alike to others they solve this local context that plays into the decision making so i don't know what we're going to get from the from the superintendents and from the department of elementary and secondary education i keep hearing that dph might come up with some more guidance on this but we haven't seen it yet and i think that's probably partly what the board of health would be waiting for is they work under the you know the local boy health works under the mass department of public health so this sort of stuck in waiting to see what tph might come up with so i don't have a lot more information from the last meeting to share about those phases of learning peace other than
028the feedback continues to be that they are asking us when i say they the department of dph and secondary education are encouraging districts to use multiple weeks of data to not as the commissioner has stated ping-pong between learning models based on a day or a week's worth of data because it could change [Music] between yellow and green or gray on some to some degree of regularity and if every day that it changes you're moving your learning model then you have this huge sort of constant change that you never really get anywhere so they're really encouraging uh three weeks of data it was is what they're really sort of the number they're pushing but again it's it's it's up to us as a community to decide what's right because it may be cases where three weeks
029doesn't make sense uh we've seen other communities where there's a huge number of people who are positive in a short period of time they need to make quick decisions and that's not three weeks and there's other situations where making a quick decision isn't the right decision based on whatever the context of those individual circumstances are so that's kind of the phases of learning document i think dph and ultimately a local boy hell we really do need to weigh in and i think again i know i said it probably two or three weeks ago that there was information that they would be coming out with something to help us but it hasn't come yet so um so that's where that's happened maria maria you were muted sorry um so just uh wrap up dph and dsc
030their advice is in is to in most cases use three weeks of data so um and also with the the going between the phases of learning models so to not make a rapid decision unless there's a large outbreak and that is the advice that we have thus far the board of health is looking at at it and hasn't gotten back to us just yet so right now we're going to do public participation and because we do have other things we need to cover we're going to set the public participation at 20 minutes if you have a question about the situation that mr lind um sent home a letter about today and i'll ask him real quickly to just go over that again um if you in the chat put type your name and then type
031your question and we will um spend about 15 to 20 minutes uh going over those questions and then if you have further questions um you can email me at mtucker um at nbschools.org and we'll try to get back to you so rich can you just go over the real quickly the situation that you um shared with um the school community today yeah so uh we were informed that we had a member of our school community test positive after going through kind of the contact contact tracing process [Music] determined that this person was out of school when they had contact and were tested so the person was at home essentially when this all came down so no members staff or students would be considered having close contact but that's with that individual so i know that
032lots of folks are concerned and want more information there's not a lot more to share other than that the person who is positive has not been in the building essentially um from the time of um exposure and testing to now um can you can you clarify the content of the letter because it sounded as though um it sounded as though they were exposed to someone who tested positive on wednesday yeah so so they were exposed to someone who tested positive on wednesday and they saw them after they tested positive they saw them and then the person has been paused right so they would have seen them before wednesday uh no that's not that's not no that's not the way it occurred oh it's not okay because i would think that if someone tested positive on
033wednesday so they saw them on wednesday i mean i'm just because if i tested positive i wouldn't come in contact but i'm trying to understand if they saw them and then the test occurred right okay so they were since they are symptomatic they were likely symptomatic on monday or tuesday i'm not sure i'm not privy to that my understanding is that um they saw the person then the person was tested was positive they were informed of that they went to get tested and they were positive so this all this all happened after their time uh in the school buildings the testing no the testing everything like after they left on tuesday they saw the person after that yes oh okay so that is the case i just want people to understand i have to be
034very careful here i totally understand i totally understand it's just the way the letter reads i'm trying not to be avoid questions but i also have to maintain some level of confidentiality absolutely that every time i answer a question that gives a further insight i'm trying i guess no one here staff a student was a close contact to the student i feel like is pretty direct and people are asking well when well i'm telling you there was no one here who's a close contact every time i answer a question okay okay i think i think what people understand no i'm glad i think that's good clarification because i think there was something it says no one here no staff of students we're a close contact so i i'm trying to answer questions because i know
035they're out there and i want to provide that but i i want people to understand i'm not avoiding questions because i'm trying to hide something other than ensuring the confidentiality of students and staff and families because if it was any of our families we wouldn't want that share necessarily i don't think anyone's asking for the school's name or anything like that but just clarification that that because i know these questions have come up so that's helpful thank you in the letter i thought i could put it clearly apparently i didn't but i thought it said you know no staff the students were close contacts so essentially that i'm sorry um i think i understand the need to be paid but you know obviously when you're when you're i think this is an opportunity maybe if
036you could just briefly discuss um how that contact process without getting into the details of who i think today that there was a positive interaction maybe you can just walk us through that really [Music] so we actually got a call from the family about the positive test we then report it to both the department of education and to the local board of health the board of health checks through the dph site to make sure that they're aware of it and they were because a positive test from wherever they went to get tested gets reported to dph so it's trying to tie up all the loose ends my report to the department of elementary and secondary education again is not specific to any person it's specific to a situation they want to make sure that they're
037available to help us with tracking or rapid unit if there's a larger outbreak and double back as they meet with dph so um the whole idea is that when cross-referencing between school healthcare providers and state and local health agencies that they're all in the loop and they understand the exact situation i'm not sure i answered your question if that would that answer though could i i was just you know so you when you first got the protocol the information you need to give before [Music] right so yeah we find out sort of when and where everybody's been our nurse did that and based on the timing the student wasn't in the building from the time of contact to the time of a positive test so whenever they had a close contact to which was wednesday
038to the time they were tested which was thursday i'm sorry which was uh friday they got the results right we're not in the building at any point and uh you know we follow up with questions like have they been in contact with anybody um have they seen you know any other people that are would have been in the building um and according to the family so had it happened or had the videos there would have been a different sort of letter more information based on communicative say the person who tested positive had been in school the communication that we have and it's in the protocols but we have a series of letters uh would have been you know for example if it was in your child's i don't know third grade classroom i don't need
039to pick up third grade so don't be worried um it would have been a letter to the students in that third grade classroom saying your child was a close contact they need to quarantine we encourage you to see your physician it would have been a very different letter because at the junior senior high where kids do move about aren't necessarily cohorted all day um at the senior high particularly again we would have had to go through all the classes say a student or a staff person was in and all those people would get a letter saying they were a close contact others would get a letter saying there was a situation but your child was not a close contact so it depends on the situation of what the communication will be if that makes sense
040yes we actually got a comment in the chat my intention was not to make it uh confusing and apparently i did and i apologize for that uh everyone's conditioned to go independent [Music] absolutely thank you for getting so if you couldn't understand tim he was saying someone in the chat said that um that explanation was much clearer than the email and then just that this is a new situation for everybody and we're all trying to manage it so is there any um in the chat are there any questions about anything any anything else besides does anyone have any comments or questions about this that particular situation nope just hope everyone's well yes agreed um all right so before i move on i just want to make sure anyone have any any of our listeners any
041comments or questions i don't see anything in the chat so i'm going to move on all right um so financial report and again i'm gonna ask you to be succinct please okay so no major changes the only big change that i can see coming is some um amendments to our um coronavirus the various coronavirus relief grants that we have um you know there are some things we planned on that we don't necessarily or will not do and there are some things that we planned a certain amount of money for and we need more or less so we want to adjust it accordingly uh for example we have some final repairs at the junior senior hive the hvac system some dampers and programming needs to happen we thought we were good there um it's there's some
042additional expense with that so we do need to move a little bit around on that and we have a couple of other items so that's the major piece that you'll see next time in our although you don't see that specifically you see the total expenditure uh but just so you know uh we are going to amend those grants and that's a pretty regular practice with our grants is to make some amendments to move things around as often those are written weeks months even a year in advance of actually spending the money so we often are estimating what something might cost or guessing what we might need it's educated guessing but sometimes it turns out to be a little different in terms of the district budget i think we're very much on track we've updated um
043with the approval of the esp's one-year contract salaries have been updated so there'll be a bit of a change there in terms of the percentage obviously it will increase a bit but we're in good shape with that and just so you know i can check off another thing from my report all positions have now been filled we don't have any open positions i believe for the entire district we had a couple of instructional assistant positions that we've filled in so um there are no open positions which is great so our our budget is very much on track um not a lot to report i think we're still at the beginning and in a lot of ways teachers and administrators are figuring out what they do need uh to to effectively do what we need to
044do this year um now that they have a full week in there under their belt and we're into the second week i think we'll start to see some of those expenditures creep back up for supplies and materials that there's you know that they really want to get to support students so um not a lot to report other than we're very much on track for where we should be all right great um so moving on to the administrators reports um ms powers and um mr lind if you want to give us the high school report it's middle school high school sure thank you um so the first couple days of school have been great and you know i wanted to shout out and thank all of the staff the faculty the staff the support staff custodians
045um allison bulger and as secretary just everyone's really stepped up to make it a positive and very efficient couple days of school so far and like mr lynn said we're into our second week so we're definitely starting to get a groove almost every junior senior high student has picked up their chromebook and teachers have been using chromebooks in and out of the classroom so when students are at home for the hybrid model and also in the classroom so it's been great to walk around and see a lot of technology in action and then the other thing i wanted to just say is that our parent teacher conferences for the fall is going to be wednesday october 14th we will send more communication out about that but um just so everyone can kind of put it
046on their calendar for the 14th in the in the evening from 6 to 8 p.m we were going to have virtual uh parent-teacher conferences so more information to come on that um mrs priestley hi everyone can you hear me okay yes so i just wanted to echo what miss power said about the um coming back and it's been amazing the kids having them here seeing them on their remote classrooms with mrs martin and mrs servant um it's just been really great to be with kids again so it's a huge thank you to all the staff that's been able to make that possible um we are working on a back-to-school night virtual style it's gonna be kind of a bitmoji style so stay tuned as we work out the details on that but i think it's
047going to be really cool uh kind of a neat format for uh all the families to meet our teachers and kind of make it a little fun so uh we do a picture day this week oh sorry mr linda what's the what's your projected date for that we are um scheduled to have our back to school night on september 30th so it's a week from wednesday we pushed it back a week just to give us more time to put the digital uh format together and also because it feels like we just started since we got the late star with kids so um it made sense to push it back uh we do have picture day this week so tomorrow is for our cohort a and c students so a and then the c who are
048here four days a week and then on thursday for our cohort b students and also our remote students have the opportunity to come in anytime between nine and two to get their picture taken that's it for me all right great mr manucci to be real brief um starting next month i'm going to have a bi-weekly communication call on wednesday evenings um kind of a take off from donuts with the director from last year um and i'll be sending out an email to the whole community to do that also the the cpac has been reorganized and we will be starting up in october and we will be starting those meetings off as zoom meetings um and again i'll send out an email to the entire uh uh school community for that and that's all i have
049for today um actually i want to mention something about um something uh project mr manucci spearheaded um with money and materials donated by the rotary club the brookfield's angels backpacks country auto bottom body and community members the student services department at north brookfield public school has over 30 desk shields built and distributed to teachers and staff at all the schools in the district the shields have given students and staff protection and added peace of mind in delivering services to students the initiative has spread and at least seven neighboring districts have started their own initiative and surrounding rotary clubs including sturbridge rotary are helping in the challenge so we did share some pictures there basically they go on top of a desk or a table and they're plexiglass and they're held together they have i don't
050know pipes or something pvc pipes for the sides but it was really wonderful um yeah we get donations and help from country auto and uh i know also from the rotary club and some other groups so it's really a great uh thing for the the kids and the teachers to have so thanks mr manucci you're welcome thank you maria all right um so uh the curriculum mrs powers again back to me thanks um so i just wanted to touch base since the last time we had our school committee meeting we did have our professional development days at the beginning of the school year i think over the summer we thought what are we going to do there's 12 days we got to plan it and we did a really great job as administrative team putting
051together things that fit under our topics which was technology integration looking at diversity equity and inclusion safety and building relationships with students so it was a very successful 12 days i really think that it was beneficial for us to use those days to get ready for this unique year and i would love to actually have more days before school starts in the future maybe not 12 but i do think having a few more really allowed staff to build on some of the things that they've been working on over the past few years and then just lastly a shout out to mrs dubuque who who is running our mentoring program our new teachers all have a mentor and they've been starting to meet regularly and really getting that program off the ground so thank you to
052her for making those connections and allowing our new staff to get the support they need um this year especially so that's all thank you awesome thank you um so mrs o'hara has a short report that uh chromebook distribution started for the junior senior high school last week um and they have loaned also 32 ipads to students in pre-k first grade for students since second through six they've loaned about 65 chromebooks to students there's a new tech assistant who has been a great help justin hatkinson the infrastructure upgrade has been completed uh there is an access point in of the classrooms in the district um and then last but not least for me anyway the google app issues with the google suite for education has been resolved which makes my daughter really happy so i had
053a question on cindy's report i saw that the eight chromebooks that haven't been passed out yet do we know if that's a transportation or a timing or a financial with the insurance is it no big deal or is it something that people that i can help with um and i know i'm not trying to get into privacy but is it something that i can drop off at night like everyone needs one um so i i think it varies for the reasons some some students are working remotely and they have a device at home and we've told them when you come back they do need a chromebook because they're trying to eliminate the personal devices on our network there's a security issue with that with malware and spyware and all that so we're trying to eliminate
054the idea of personal uh you know kids and staff personal devices on our network but since you know some some are working remotely they don't need the chromebook right away others it's just connecting with the parent and you know figuring out a time and those kinds of things we've made accommodations uh i don't think we need to drive to homes we've asked them to just fill up the paperwork and email it or send it in and we'll we'll just chromebook any student that doesn't have a chromebook we give them a daily loader they do need it at home but we're in pretty good shape right now but if we do need help i'll keep you in mind okay just curious if there is a place to step in yeah i'm pretty happy with the number
055like we're almost completely handed out it's great uh really super uh we did have a question on chat um sorry am i am i muted nope you're good okay um the insurance cost is prohibitive to many families who are struggling right now are there accommodations for families who can't afford to pay the insurance for the chromebook yeah we've made a combination of families because they um them for three years and we're self-insuring so we've been working with a company called worth the worth group and so we need to pay the insurance bill so that if anything happens to them over those three years we can get them repaired or replaced where we're working with families when they need assistance to try to try to figure out how we can move forward but yes we are
056making accommodations okay any other questions or any about that um so last is mr shaw's report and he says school started and it's great to see staff and students in the building um they've done all their yearly inspections of the fire alarm system generators elevators and had our walkthrough with the fire department and the building inspectors and the board of health also did a walk through the air the hvac systems and equipment has been tested and they are still in the process of getting the vendors in as you can imagine all schools are doing the same thing and these vendors are doing all they can to get to each of us uh schneider electric has evaluated our elementary system and they are working on programming to update the system for more outside air changes they
057have gone through the system that they have control in the high school and i will be meeting with them next week to review things um they're going uh there's another company that is going through all the individual classroom universe in the high school and have a couple more days of testing to complete um the elementary school has a different system so uh should be less of an issue and they conducted air quality testing and it uh inspected the hvac systems and there will be a report issued which will be a baseline for ongoing testings his initial findings are that we are in good shape and also that they're staying busy getting ready for fall storms sports and as always he thanks the staff for their hard work all right any other any questions about the
058reports nope all right um so we do have to do a final approval of inter-class interscholastic athletics before they can begin so there is uh information if you want to give it to us really quickly um what the how it's going to be set up i provided you the memo and it's essentially what we've got last time except for some bullet points on the top of page two mr sloan our athletic director who is part of these meetings essentially everybody in central mass is playing as long as they're not in red and the other ones that are not read that i'm playing are the vocational schools because there's just too many communities that are involved they can't manage all those different uh possible community outbreaks that might happen they put us in in pods here
059we're in pot number two with bay path prouty leicester uh quavong shepard hill south bridge and kantasqua they tried to do it geographically to keep people closer together we're going to play everybody at least once with the season ending in mid-november and they tried to set up the the meets so that it would be spaced out so for example cross country there means we are tuesdays and fridays field hockey tuesdays and thursdays and soccer will be mondays wednesdays and fridays so they're just trying to move things around we've gone through sign ups to try to be ahead of the curve we could definitely have teams out there for each sport there is a drop in in participation as you might imagine some of that has been people who have are just concerned about the health
060and wellness and some is folks that have opted for other auctions like playing aau or club or some other thing because uh they feel the regulations the guidelines are too strict so it's across the board from two-string to not strict enough i guess so uh it's all individual i do think it's um it's it would be great if we can do it i would recommend that the school can approve athletics we will be working diligently not only internally but with other schools and communities to make sure their schools and communities don't have significant outbreaks so to speak but um i think what they put into place uh is really strong and i know we did have mr sloan on here earlier i don't know if we uh no you seem to cover everything um like
061you said we're in the pods it's based on geography it cuts travel down by like 20 miles or close to 20 miles on average less time on the buses for the kids who have to wear the masks and limited amount of games just to get everybody out there and all the ads are in agreement that it's just kind of let's just get them out there have some fun there's no playoffs there's no tournaments to worry about or any of that so in terms of the buses is the it's i assume the setup is the same as the when they're coming to and from school yes absolutely will there be spectators allowed at the games so the central mass athletic association has decided that there will be one spectator per player for both for home and
062away games so like you could go watch tyler play or you could pass it off to his aunt but it's only one spectator per event all right so if there's no other comments or questions for mr sloane or mr linde about the athletics we have to vote on it we would have to vote to approve it i move we approve uh all in favor who was the second i'm sorry i was elizabeth thanks elizabeth sorry i missed it all right we'll go out there and uh have fun kids thank you and just a side note have fun parents and others but please remember that when we're on campus we have a mass policy we have requirements and the only way we're going to be able to keep having gains and activities like this is if
063we all follow those guidelines and rules uh it's really important i know it's times and uncomfortable at times but to be able to keep having school to be able to keep having athletics we really need people to adhere to those uh guidelines if people aren't we just can't have them and you know i'll make that call if i need to i know the school committee will as well they want to make sure school opens as i do um we really just need your help whether it's students student athletes coaches parents spectators fans etc we just need everybody's help with this to have it work all right if you want to play follow the rules then please um so moving on to um we have to update a policy is this the first reading um it
064doesn't need to be the first reading okay the policy subcommittee this is um tonight we're going through um some of the graduation requirements that existed in the past and some of the things that we've adjusted over time also the idea of having a digital citizenship course as a graduation requirement is something that we really think is important we also have had in my three years a number of times where a student has transferred into their senior year for example and they can't meet a graduation requirement because it's just not enough time because their previous school didn't have that graduation requirement when we have to waive it it's just one of those i think this is just clean up uh but i'd certainly like the policy subcommittee to look at it maybe bring it to the
065next meeting for a reading and we can go through the three readings all right just to give you a heads up that and to remind mrs and i to keep this moving forward who's sorry i should know this who's our policy subcommittee so it's maria and tim okay so if i would like to make a suggestion to community service paragraph do i just email them yeah you can send it to me and we'll when we have our meeting i think we're going to do one in october uh we'll put it on there okay thank you um so we have several items in new business that we have to vote on um before we vote on the elementary school handbooks is there anything significantly different that we need to know about the either the elementary or
066the junior senior high school handbooks um i'll turn it over to mrs priestley for the elementary um i put in the changes the biggest change which is our inclusion of the restorative practices language so that we are recognizing that we're not focusing just solely on punitive the you know um infraction and consequence system but also um realizing that behavior is a form of communication and that we want to work with students and work with their families to try to get at the root of the behaviors um so that we can teach them how to just be better people so that's our that's in there now um so if you have any questions about that you can let me know all right does anyone have any questions about the handbook before we vote to approve it
067all right so we need a motion to approve the elementary school handbook um i can move that we approve the elementary school handbook and do we have a second wait a second all right all in favor aye just so you know tim is not doing motions because the audio on the computer he's using right now which is mine is really bad so yes so um all right so uh the heist junior senior high school uh handbook are there any significant changes nothing major we obviously updated all the names and dates we updated the school committee policies and that goes for the elementary one as well we adjusted the handbook with some of the important changes based on the reopening plan but the great majority is similar to last year when we um we unified them
068all last year was the first year we had unified so there wasn't a lot of work that needed to be done mostly updating anyone have any questions or anything all right so we need a motion to approve the junior senior high school handbook motion to approve the handbook second all in favor hi great thank you all right so next we have the improvement plans for both the elementary school and uh the junior senior high this is pretty you want to hit the goals really quickly for the elementary school sorry i was just pulling it up um yes so goal one if we provide more opportunities for families to engage with teachers and staff then we will be more equipped to provide what students need resulting in improved student outcomes uh it's our belief that we
069really want to engage families in what we do here at school that's very important to us the second goal if we implement a multi-tiered system of support we can better address students academic behavioral and social and emotional needs resulting in every student reaching his or her fullest potential so taking a multi-tiered approach to address student needs is in all areas academic behavioral and emotional so that's something that encompasses our pbis work our intervention work or academic intervention work the restorative practices all of those elements really fit there and then the last one is specifically focused on restorative practices as this is a relatively new shift for us if we implement restorative practices that promote inclusiveness relationship building and problem solving in an effort to reduce disciplinary problems then children will be involved and committed to
070their schooling resulting in improved student there any outcomes does anyone have any questions if not we need to a motion to a vote on the school improvement plan i make a motion to approve the school improvement plan i have a second i second the school improvement plan all in favor all right so the junior senior high school we have the go over that one real quickly too so um the the junior high improvement plan uh goal number one is if we build strong relationships with and families and students and families will feel more connected to our school our district community resulting in improved student outcomes interestingly enough both schools are working on building relationships and as a matter of fact that will be a professional practice goal for every educator in the district teachers uh
071we'll all be working on building relationships we think it's particularly important this year with six months out of school um bill number two also addresses the multi-tiered system of support if we implement that we can better address students academic behavioral social emotional needs resulting in every student reaching his or her fullest potential again the idea is that we've been working with the department of development and secondary education on a multi-tiered system of support we've been working on pbis working on a student assistance team trying to increase academic supports for all students we've done a number of different things but we're trying to pull them all into together to one sort of goal to move things forward and then the last goal if we effectively integrate technology into teaching and learning student outcomes will be improved
072obviously we have some huge technology initiatives going on the one to one chromebook initiative for one you know we implemented edge annuity last year i think very successfully for you really a full first year we hope to expand that and we really want to move technology from just a get information thing to a two-way communication piece where teachers students and parents can communicate with each other effectively so those are the goals around that uh so now any questions then we need a motion to approve the junior senior high school school improvement plan i can move that we approve the junior seniors all in favor hi thank you so the next item is a request for transportation from a family of a grade 11 student yeah so i don't know what the policy was years ago
073how the school district handled that but i couldn't i couldn't say that it didn't happen this way but uh student has been writing the books for 12 years and they are school choice my mother says they're not supposed to but i was informed that in the past this may have occurred where administrators actually set that up i have no documentation of that that's just from the parent and from some staff that have been around saying yeah i think that may have happened none of the administrators here were here during those that time i think based on what the parent is telling me it sounds like it was set up obviously this came to light for us as we did in this pandemic world where we had to limit the number of kids on the bus
074so we actually sent invites to people that's what the parent reached out and said what my child can't ride the bus how are they going to get to school we have been in this school field for 12 years now this is that 12th year kindergarten through uh now into 11th grade is it possible i said i cannot waive the policy that is a school committee policy and that's something that i could bring into you as a committee and he asked that i do so so i am bringing it to you i think there's two things to consider here one is the needs of that student and second is the impact that it potentially could have that if other school choice families can if that school choice family can have transportation why can't they all and
075i'm not sure what um so i i guess at this point i would recommend that we approve it and take up any other requests individually i think based on longevity i can make the argument that this student has been taking transportation forever since i came here 12 years of transportation and if uh you know if others wouldn't would want that then i i think we could take it up uh in general the policy is no take transportation so it's a tough call i totally understand you know where the parent is coming from but i also know that transporting school choice students gets very difficult and may have an impact ultimately so just just so people are clear um this student takes he gets the bus at an established north brookfield route so it's not like
076a bus is going out of town to pick him up so obviously he's brought to a bus stop in north brookfield um you know i i see the the issue that you know potentially people might bring this up again but since you know this has been going on for so many years and the the student is in you know 11th grade i i personally don't have an issue with allowing this one student to continue doing this until they finish yeah it would seem to me that you know unless there was a situation where um a school choice student were pushing the number of students over the limit where we needed to then get more buses i mean that could be a situation where we crossed that bridge when we came to it but assuming that
077that's not the case i feel really comfortable with just allowing it to continue based on past precedent yeah right now that is not the case we're not in danger of going over the 25 students okay any other comments or questions um tim it's it's not real great do you want to uh just text me and i'll i'll read your comment or question so we're just gonna wait for tim here to let us know what he wants to say it actually probably be quicker for me to like walk oh there we go all right um so we are voting to approve this one student not voting to change the policy we're going to keep the policy in place and yes so the policy will continue to exist we are waiving it for this one student in
078this situation is that hey tim give me a thumbs up where are you okay all right um does anyone else have any questions or comments all right i need a motion to approve the uh waiving the policy the school choice uh the policy for this student i make a motion to approve the policy for that said student second thank you all right um so last we have a number of donations from the pto um and so i'll just read them off real quickly and then if i could ask one of the other school committee members to um ask for a motion to approve them so the pto approved 210 dollars for mrs marr for a scholastic subscription 151.58 for miss lacoy for classroom library books 60 dollars for grade 5 for chair bands uh up
079to 165 dollars for wiggle seats for grade 165 mrs martin for a scholastic subscription and 125 for mrs martin for generation genius so just a motion to approve all of the pto donations [Music] um my understanding is a wiggle seat is something that actually mrs priestley you know what it is don't you um the wiggle seats the ones that you sit on and they wobble yeah they're for fidgety students so it's so tim wants one so we'll uh we'll send information so you can get one for your for your office all right i'm sure your supervisor will pay for it all right so um any other questions so we need a motion to approve the pto donations i make a motion to approve the pto donations a second all in favor aye all right thank
080you so much all right if there's no no other comments or questions in the chat then we're going to have a move to adjourn to adjourn second all right all in favor hi thank you thank you everyone i am going to continue to work to try to figure out the technology but there's no easy answer out there we've asked a lot of different people yeah we'll we'll keep trying all right bye have a good night everyone you